OAS ARCH NOTES 83-1:11-3
1983
John Steckley
In two 17th Century dictionaries of Huron are found ‘calendars’ of each month or moon, with each month beinq named after some natural or human event that occurred during that period. The calendars are useful ethnohistorical documents as they tell us something about what the Huron did, observed and thought was significant in each month.
Sources
One of the dictionaries is a French-huron-Onondaga manuscript (hereafter termed FHO) that I have elsewhere suggested was written by Jesuit Fathers Chaumonot and Dablon in the mid 1650’s (Steckley 1982:29). The other, a French-Huron dictionary (FH), was evidently written at a later date as it contains more and better entries. In a series of lists at the end of the dictionary there is a reference to “l’ancienne Lorette” (FH250), a Huron settlement that would not have received that name until the Huron moved to the second or ‘Jeune Lorette’ in 1697.
While both dictionaries were written after the Huron left Huronia, I think it fair to say that the calendars reflect the terms used in Huronia. For Jesuit dictionaries were conservative documents. Hand copying a dictionary was one of the methods employed in teaching a newcomer the language. Each ‘new’ version was merely a rewrite of an earlier one, with perhaps a few additions made and little, if anything, taken away. In Potier’s dictionary of the 1740’s, for example, when he recorded words not used by the Wyandots he was working with, he merely added ‘non dict.’ (not spoken) after the entry. Huron dictionaries from the 1650’s to the 1740’s are remarkably similar, the only drastic change coming when the format was changed from French-Huron to Huron-French. The calendar presented here, then, was most likely first recorded in a dictionary written during a time when the Jesuits were in Huronia, and henceforth became enshrined in subsequent versions.
Entries
The following are the entries for each month. Unless otherwise stated the entry given will be from the second dictionary (FH244). Two versions will be given where they differ significantly in the two sources. References to Potier’s dictionary relate to the noun and verb roots that make up the words or phrases in the entry.
| 1) | January: “esk8entesa. Le jour cruit un peu.” This can be translated (from Huron to English) as ‘day will become longer’ (Potier 1920:385 #47 and 455). |
| 2) | February: “esk8entesk8anne. /les jours/sont plus grands.” This can be translated as ‘day will again be long’ (Potier 1920:253-4, 385 #47 and 455). |
| 3) | March: “anda8at, anda8attonnen. le débordent des eaux.” This can be translated as ‘flowing water appears, overflows’ (Potier 1920:197-8, 277 #54 and 448). |
| 4) | April:(a) “Atsi, i ondi a, anna, oha. le poisson d’ore donne.” As ‘dore’ is French-Canadian for walleye or pickerel, this can probably be translated as ‘when the pickerel come or run’ (Potier 1920:301 #34 and FHO17 and FH232).(b) “ahaon d’a?ochingot. Les grues arrivent.” This can be translated as ‘when the cranes or herons arrive’ (Potier 1920:314 #80 and 445; Sagard in Wrong 1939:220; and FH232). |
| 5) | May:(a) “daat enda, a?a on seme .” This can be translated as ‘when one plants or sows’ (Potier 1920:274 #47). (b) “Tichiont 8tsistara, i. les fraises en fleur.” This can be translated as ‘when strawberry flowers open, when strawberries are in flower’ (Potier 1920:336 #17 and 454; and FH80). (c) “Eeront8ten on plant l’arbor ” (found in FH only, probably an addition). This can be translated as ‘when one will plant trees’ (Potier 1920:437 #76 and 453). |
| 6) | June: “Tichiont a8ahiari / ahiarista. temps des fraises.” This can be translated as ‘when strawberries are ripe’ (Potier 1920:345 #42 and 445; and F1180). |
| 7) | July: “Sang8atrannens / ahiarista. Temps des framboises ou des meures.” This can be translated as ‘when rasberries or blackberries are ripe’ (Potier 1920:345 #42 and 445; and FH233). The reference to blackberries is found only in the later dictionary. |
| 8) | August: “Onnenhondia. Le bled en lait / a8ennenh8t. le ble s’ouvre.” These can be translated as ‘when the little corn is made, formed’ (Potier 1920:410 and 450) and ‘when the (ear of) corn stands out’ (Potier 1920:437 #76 and 450). The reference to the latter occurs only in the second dictionary. |
| 9) | September: “a8ennenhichien / ondoiari / ondoiaristi. Le ble meur.” This can be translated as ‘the corn is completed, ripe’ (Potier 1920:345 #12, 394 #20 and 449; and FH23). |
| 10) | October: (a) “atsihiendo a, anna, oha. La pesche du gr/and/poisson.” This can be transIated as ‘when the atsihiendo come, run’ (Potier 1920:301 #34). There is some difficulty in identifying this fish, which was referred to repeatedly by Sagard as the most important food fish for the Huron (Wrong 1939:185-90). Most writers have claimed or implied that atsihiendo was the Huron term for ‘whitefish’ (Wring 1939:185, Kinietz 1940:25, Tooker 1967:63, Heidenreich 1971:208-12 and Trigger 1976:41). However, as November’s entry labels another fish as “poisson blanc” this claim seems questionable. Further doubt is cast by a translation of atsihiendo in the second dictionary as “le grand poiss/on/dore.” (FH232). The possible alternatives are reduced by lists of fish names found in both dictionaries, which include names for “barbue, brochet, carpe, eturgeon, harang, saumon’ and ‘truitte’ (FH017-8 and FH232). (b) “Annentrata, on e, ârok…le pesche…du bord de l’eau.” This can be translated as ‘one will cast a net from on the shore’ (Potier 1920:402 and 446). Interestingly, the first word in this phrase is the same as the term “einchataon” given by Sagard (Wrong 1939:230) and interpreted by him as meaning a kind of fish caught in the manner that this phrase describes. The writer of the first dictionary gives “Annentrata, on du bord de l’eau” in his list of fish names (FH017). While the term ‘annentrata,on’ (meaning ‘on or in the shore or edge of the water’) could be a fish name, the fact that the term is absent from the list in the second dictionary suggest that it merely describes the location where a certain kind (or certain kinds) of fish was or were caught. |
| 11) | November: “chionh8a a, anna, oha. pesche du poisson blanc.” This can be translated as ‘when whitefish come or run’ (Potier 1920:301 #34 and FH017) . |
| 12) | December:(a) “Ora,eniat. aratsi ok8etonx8a. lorsque l’ours fait ses petits.” Although the meaning of the first word is rather obscure, being derived from a verb meaning ‘to be the top or peak of something’ (Potier 1920:244 #85), the rest of the phrase can be translated as ‘when the bear bears its young’ (Potier 1920:170 #59 and FH231). (b) “sk8enditiok8ichia?a. on f/ont/ les bandes p/ou/r la chasse du cerf.” This can be translated as ‘they again from bands, groups at this time.’ (Potier 1920:394 #20 and 455). |
References Cited
Heidenreich, Conrad
1971 Huronia: A History and Geography of the Huron Indians, 1600-1650. Toronto, McClelland and Stewart Ltd.
Kinietz, W. V.
1940 The Indians of the Western Great Lakes, 1615-1760. Ann Arbour, Univ. of Michigan Press.
Potier, Pierre
1920 “Radices Huronicae” in The Fifteenth Report of the Bureau of Archives for the Province of Ontario, 1918-1919.pp. 159-455, Toronto.
Steckley, John L.
1982 “The Clans and Phratries of the Huron”. Ontario Archaeology 37:29-34.
Tooker, Elisabeth
1964 An Ethnography of the Huron Indians 1615-1649. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Athnology Bull. No. 190, Washington.
Trigger, Bruce G.
1976 The Children of Aataentsic 2 vols., McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, Montreal.
Wrong, George
1939 The Long Journey to the Country of the Huron. The Champlain Society, Toronto.